I see the Mail on Sunday has a big story about the EU-UK negotiations with David Frost apparently telling ministers what we remainers have been saying for four years. We are not going to get the easy, good access deal they always said was on offer. Let us hope the message doesn't come as too much of a shock. He told them (according to the Mail anyway) that the talks are heading for collapse and we should prepare for leaving without a trade deal.
Frost says if there is no progress in the face of EU "stubbornness" and "ideological intransigence" we will need to give notice that there will be no deal and that we should 'take the moral high ground'. This last phrase almost made me sick.
Nobody can match the cabinet Brexiteers for stubbornness and ideology. It is the kettle calling the pot black. The EU haven't voted to leave us, they haven't changed any of the treaties and are looking at us now exactly as Brexiteers have always demanded - as a third country. Now they complain about it. We used to have a lot of influence, now we have none and all you can hear is cries of the EU being 'stubborn'.
I am sorry to say he is probably right about the talks being close to collapse. The two sides are well-entrenched and there seems no likelihood of a significant shift in positions anytime soon. Political decisions are needed and when it comes to that (as it will) Johnson is in by far the worst position.
He has the most flexibility (and a record to prove it), the most power, a supine parliament and the most to lose if it all goes wrong. On the other side there are 27 countries bound together with a mandate, which took a lot of argument to agree I imagine and not easily changed, the leaders are all in different positions politically and they certainly have the least to lose. Plus, it would send entirely the wrong message if one nation was able to face down the EU.
But more than that, there is the risky shift phenomenon, sometimes known as group polarisation or mob mentality. This is a well-known psychological curiosity in group behaviour, i.e. the EU27:
"Risky shift occurs when people change their decisions or opinions to become more extreme and risky when acting as part of a group, compared with acting individually; this is one form of the phenomenon known as group polarization. The result is that group decisions are bolder and more adventurous than those made by individuals alone and even riskier than the average of the individuals’ opinions and decisions before group discussion."
Unless Johnson is the absolutely reckless madman that some people think he is and given his record last year when he was under massive pressure to secure a deal, I am quite sure he will make a lot of concessions. He likes to be liked and going down in history as the man who mismanaged the coronavirus pandemic, sent the public finances into meltdown and then, to cap it all, threw the nation over a cliff as far as global trade is concerned when the WTO is close to collapse and protectionism sentiment is rising, would be folly in the extreme.
On a more local note but in the same context, these big political decisions are coming up as Nissan are said the be thinking about moving some production from a Renault plant in Spain to Sunderland. The models are the Captur and the Kadjar which would I assume be for the British market. It would not make sense (surely?) to move models OUT of their main market and IN to an offshore production plant if tariffs are due when they are imported. This makes no sense to me, unless Nissan have been given private assurances or the 'leak' is intended to put a bit more pressure on Johnson to get real and reach an agreement on EU terms. It could be that and Sunderland potentially switching from a mainly exporting plant to far more domestic production of a mixed model line up.
It would secure the factory, reduce the risk of tariffs being introduced but at the cost of losing economies of scale. It would also have big negative impact on our exports.
Finally, on the Adam Smith blog there is an article about why we DON'T want a level playing field and if that's the EU's demand, then we should leave without a deal. It is written by a man who was UKIP's candidate for the 2009 European elections - and has never had a proper job in his life. If he genuinely thinks we will survive more that a month or two before we are back in Brussels cap and cheque book in hand he is in for a hell of a surprise.
But he won't be alone.
